Jersey Mayhem: Defendant Slaps His Own Attorney In The Face In Court

I guess if you were a paroled bank robber facing new charges of eluding police, aggravated assault on a civilian, carjacking, aggravated assault on a police officer, disarming a police officer, resisting arrest, harming a law-enforcement animal, unlawful possession of a weapon, possession of prohibited, hollow-nose bullets and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, and you’re from the Jersey Shore, you might get into court and just say fuck it, imagine yourself as Bon Jovi singing at a deserted drive-in theater atop a mesa in the Moab Desert, and go out in a blaze of glorious mayhem.

The defendant, 41-year-old Neptune resident Anthony Montgomery, smacked his own attorney, deputy assistant public defender Philip Pagano, in the face yesterday morning in a Toms River courtroom. Later, after being tackled and subdued by four sheriff’s officers, as he was being led out of the courtroom in shackles, he somehow managed to pick up a microphone stand and threw it at the lawyer.

The trial stems from an incident in 2008 when Montgomery led police on 16-minute chase from Tinton Falls to Neptune during which he is alleged to have crashed into one civilian motorist, attempted to pull another civilian out of another vehicle, punched a police dog and a police sergeant, and attempted to steal another police officer’s gun. That’s right: he punched a police dog. I haven’t heard of that kind of mayhem since last summer, when that guy punched the cop’s horse at Lollapalooza.